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Schumer: ‘The president is in trouble’

Chuck Schumer has a blunt assessment of Donald Trump’s accusation that Barack Obama tapped his phones last fall: “The president is in trouble.”

The Senate minority leader said Sunday morning that Trump’s Saturday-morning allegations about former President Obama will be damaging to Trump’s presidency whether they are true or not and that “the president makes it worse with these tweets.”

“If he falsely spread this kind of misinformation, that is so wrong. It’s beneath the dignity of the presidency … it shows this president doesn’t know how to conduct himself,” Schumer told “Meet the Press.” “If it’s true, it’s even worse for the president. Because that means that a federal judge, independently elected, has found probable cause that the president, or people on his staff … have probable cause to have broken the law or to have interacted with a foreign agent.”

The comments by Schumer further exacerbate a days-long beef between the top Senate Democrat and the president.

Schumer called on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign over misleading Congress about Sessions’ meetings with the Russian ambassador; the president tweeted to his millions of followers a photo of Schumer eating doughnuts with the Russian ambassador. Now Trump is asking that Congress investigate his own allegations about Obama’s wiretapping order — and Schumer will be a key part of those probes as a party leader who regularly receives intelligence information from top government officials.

Schumer said Trump’s claims of wiretapping are attempts at diverting attention away from the questions about his campaign’s ties to the Russians, which took on new significance after Sessions recused himself from any investigation after admitting he met twice with the Russian ambassador. And the Democratic leader said he has “doubts” that Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) can get to the bottom of the entire saga given Burr’s interventions with some media organizations over their reporting on the matter.

“The faith I have in the intelligence committee is in [Intelligence Committee ranking member] Mark Warner and the Democrats. They’ve been holding Burr’s feet to the fire. And they have said they will look for another alternative if Chairman Burr doesn’t fully pursue this,” Schumer said. “If we have a special prosecutor, they will get to the bottom of all of this. And that’s what we need.”